Saturday, February 22, 2014

Storing the Stash

I have been seeing a lot of bloggers and nail polish makers posting pictures of their nail polish stashes and polish rooms lately. I love seeing how everyone's looks! There are a quite a few that leave me speechless and in awe but I have to say my own polish room pretty awesome in it's own right. I have spent the majority of my life without a space that was just mine. With the exception of a bedroom I had in my house where I had a Hide & Sleep Bed Tent, I have always had to compromise my idea for someone else. Not anymore! When we bought our house 2 years ago, my boyfriend and I purchased a house with 5 bedrooms and a few other really great spaces like the loft and the room we turned into a library. With the exception of our furry housemates and the room my mom uses when she spends 6 months with us, it's all ours!! The second largest room in the house was painted pink with one accent wall in pink and white stripes. I initially liked the room until I started to work from home and the pink was just way too obnoxious for me. I added some IKEA furniture, painted all the walls but one gray and TADA... my perfect sanctuary was born. (the other wall is Chroma Key green for doing green screen work)

I turned this into the polish haven sometime in the past 6 months. I love this room. It's so perfect for me. I continue to try and find solutions that fit not only my style and aesthetic preferences but my budget as well. The more money I spend on places to put my polish, the less I have to spend on polish itself!

Nail art table. Oscar the cat is guarding a binder full of stamping plates.

The nail polish/office is in two parts. First is the nail art center as I like to think of it. This is where I do most of my stamping, decals, photos, and where I store the majority of my supplies. My light box is in progress right now but does work OK for now. There are extra supplies in the drawers under the table as well as bins for my stampers, extra brushes and tools or anything else I might need to create. The bottle of water is there for nail art too as it's what I use for water marbling. In the corner are my two Melmers that are almost full. I got them at Michael's on Black Friday for 50% off. I am going to get a Helmer or two when I next make the hour long trip to Ikea then move these to my master bathroom for my makeup. (or just fill up the Helmers with new polish!!) The green binder is filled with stamping plates as is the one on the table with the cat.

Top drawer is full of minis. I have a ton of Hit Polish minis as well as LA Colors and Kleancolor.

Drawer 2 is my nail art supplies and treatments. I keep all my Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in there because I use them the most in stamping and decals. Also any nail art stickers, rhinestones, studs etc are kept here along with all my top coats, base coats and treatments.

Drawer 3 is Sephora by OPI, Essence, LA Girl, Revlon, Fingerpaints and Nails Inc. There may be a few other brands in there too!

Drawer 6 is all kinds of different polishes including LA Colors, Sally Hansen Prisms, Hard as Nails and Salon Complete, Milani, Candies, old Sinful Colors, Hot Topic, Wet n' Wild Wild Shine, LOUD Music scented polish, Nail Fetish, and some really old mall polishes. I think there's some Max Factor in there too along with Pure Ice and NYC.

I have another smaller 2 drawer unit that houses all of my nail striping polishes and my back ups as well as the other drawer holds all of my vintage polishes.

Nail stripers and some older back ups of Revlon Streetwear and L'Oreal Jet Set polishes.

My back up and some back ups to the back ups are in this side. I had more but recently added some to a swap box.

The second half of my room is where my wall rack is. My table used to be on this wall and there is still a table here but I don't do as much nail art on it because I have 2 floor lamps over by the desk and the table lamp and my polish storage on my walls right now are foam racks. I won't lie. I am not the best at hot glue carpentry so they are pretty terrible. As you will see one whole shelf is completely empty because it's falling down. I have tried to repair it several times but I get cold easily when I am working from home so I shut the vent and the room heats up and the glue gets soft. I want to replace them with acrylic racks some day.

My OPI's!!! I separated them by finish. I also put my L'Oreal Jet Set in Lightening that I just bought on Ebay (it's my 3rd bottle) and my Butter London's on this rack. On the top is my one spill over Nicole by OPI as well.

China Glaze!

Lastly I have a spice rack that was where I kept my indies when I started collecting them. They have far exceeded the space and I kept it for my Hit Polish collection.

My Hit Polish collection is special to me. She was one of the first indie brands I purchased. I am sad she is no longer making theses beauties anymore and while a lot of my polish is irreplaceable these are especially so.

You may be wondering with a polish collection this size how do I ever know what I have. I am pretty OCD when it comes to it but I mostly keep track of my polish using a spreadsheet in Excel and my nail wheels.

Each wheel belongs to a color category. I have a corresponding page in my Excel file that lists the polish. The wheels are numbered so I can find them easily. I pretty much know what's where since my polish is organized by brand not color. It's not hard finding it once I know where to look. I like that I can have all 1000 + in one small place that I can carry around from room to room.